Meditate on that for a while .

"Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads you to wisdom." Buddha  

Today we are going to look at meditation, the benefits you can get from a meditation practice and the different types of mediation. Meditation has always enamored me especially the fact that someone can sit in silent reflection, until I found it was much more than silent reflection. As a kid and as an adult sitting still has not been easy, I am nosey and a bit hyper a trying combination at times. This is one of the reasons mediation has peaked my interest, once I heard about the benefits then I was all in. Meditation can improve our creative thinking, our energy, our stress levels and our success as well. Studies have shown that meditation is associated with improvement various psychological areas, which include stress, anxiety, addiction, depression, and cognitive function. Research also suggests meditation has been shown to reduces blood pressure, eating disorders, pain response, stress hormone levels and cellular health. Meditation has also been shown to preserve function in an aging brain, that one was for the baby boomers who make up 35% of the U.S. population. We all need to consider the ramifications of letting an opportunity like this to pass us by, an aging population affects all, and we will be the caregivers for the aged.  You can change the way you perceive yourself, change the way you think about and how resolve problems. We do not need to spend years in mediation either to reap the benefits; people have had a positive outcome within weeks of starting a meditation practice.  

The benefits of meditation have been quantified in some recent studies by MIT and Harvard researchers.  A study published in the April Brain Research Bulletin, they found that people that trained to meditate over an eight week period were better able to control specific type of brain waves called alpha rhythms. According to Christopher Moore, an MIT neuroscientist and senior author of the paper.“The data they gathered indicated  that meditation training makes you better at focusing, in part by allowing you to better regulate how things that arise will impact you.” The alpha brain waves were the focus of this study, they flow through cells in the brain’s cortex where sensory information is processed. The alpha waves help suppress irrelevant or distracting sensory information. A study was done in 1996 of a group of Buddhist Monks who meditated regularly had elevated alpha rhythms across their brains. This study focused on the waves’ role in a specific part of the brain-cells of the sensory cortex that process tactile information from the hands and feet. They recruited 12 subjects who had never mediated before. Half of the participants were trained in a technique called mindfulness-based stress reduction over an eight-week period, while the other half were told not to meditate. The MBSR program called for participants to meditate for 45 minutes per day, after an initial two-and-a half-hour training session. The subjects listen to a CD recording of a guided meditation. Brain scans were done before start of the study, three weeks in and at the end of the eight weeks. At the eight week mark the subjects who had been trained in meditation showed larger changes in the size of their alpha waves when asked to pay attention to a certain body part. They also observed rapid changes in wave size in the meditators.  This can have a beneficial affect with people who suffer from chronic pain, in that they can be trained to be aware of where they focus their attention and not to get caught on a painful area. This will also allow people to be more able to handle stress. The plan is for follow up studies on cancer patients and people with chronic pain.  In 2010 a study was done on people who practiced focused meditation for 5 hours a day for 12 weeks. After conducting concentration tests, the participants were shown to have an easier time sustaining voluntary attention. We need to train and strengthen focused attention like any other skill. The study found that 20 minutes a day was all that was needed to get beneficial results. A 2008 study showed that 10 days of intensive mediation found that after completing the mindfulness training, the subjects had improvements in mindfulness, contemplative thoughts, the alleviation of depressive symptoms, and boosts working memory and sustained attention.  This should shed some light on what a focused meditation practice can do for you and hopefully get you interested in meditation. 

Lets look at some basic types of meditation; the first one up is Mindfulness or Vipassana, it is the most popular form of meditation in the western world. The idea is about being present and letting your mind run accepting what comes to mind recognizing it and practicing detachment. This is taught with attention to the breath, making no changes to the breathing just observing what its doing. The next one up is Zazen generally accepted as seated meditation in the Buddhist tradition. It is a minimal kind of meditation called the anti method can be done for long periods of time. It was developed by monks, this made it hard for people in an active world to learn, with this form of meditation there is very little instruction. Next one up is a transcendental meditation comes from the meditative tradition of Hinduism. In TM seated in a Lotus position repeating a sacred word or a mantra. In the beginning the focus is to rise above all the impermanent. Over time as your practice advances the focus shifts to your breath, changing your breath to change your state of being. Kundalini is another form of meditation from Hinduism, the name is for the rising stream of energy that exists in a human being. The aim is to become aware of the rising stream and to ride it to infinity, by focusing the breath to flow through the energy centers of the body. Always moving it upward toward the energy center just above the top of the head. Qi gong meditation a form of Taoist meditation focused on the breath or the qi or chi, using it to circulate energy through the organs and energy centers of the body. This is often called the microcosmic orbit, the three major energy centers are a point two inches below the navel, the center of the chest, and the center of the forehead. The next one is guided visualization a popular form of meditation where you concentrate on an image or an imaginary environment. There are two types of guided meditation one uses a recording with music and guidance, the other is where you guide yourself to a certain point with breath manipulation. Then you use imagery to take yourself to your medicine place or a safe room in your own mind. Some say this is not part of “meditation tradition” this is not correct the native peoples have used this form of meditation for centuries.  The last one is heart rhythm meditation which focuses on the breath and the heartbeat. The breath is changed to be deep, full, rich and rhythmic with balance. The attention of focused on the heart as the center of the energetic system, identifying yourself with the heart. The breath becomes the focus as you learn to direct your breath feeling the circulation as you pulse in different parts of the body. This allows to become more powerful and sensitive by being in control of yourself always.

 We are living in strange times with information coming at us from all angles at light speed and it's not all good information either. Many of us are in need of a filter or a way to digest whats in front of us. I feel that meditation may be the key, not to control the world but to control our reaction to it. Meditation allows us a doorway into our own mind to work on problems, correct energy levels, learn to deal with stress, alleviate depression and most of all gives us the power. This blog will likely be going to three posts a week and a bimonthly weekend list. Please read and share this blog. I am available for consultation on health and fitness programs, as well as kettlebell and kettlebell instruction.